It looks like half-way through designing enemies and hammering out the game mechanics and details, the designers decided to call it a day, put everything on cruise control, and allow what was already there – the nice graphics, the orchestral music, the playful weapon physics – to guide the player the rest of the way. And you know what? It worked and worked quite well. Consider how the game would’ve turned out if Tecmo had decided to gun the engine and pull out all the stops. Rygar: The Legendary Adventure, had the designers allowed the game to fully develop, could’ve come so close to video game perfection it’s frightening.

The story is pretty sparse, but what’s there is silly, contrived, and rather annoying. Propping the gameplay against a literary backdrop of Grecian and Roman ideas brought to the screen with a fastidious painter's eye can’t veil the fact that the game is still very, very Japanese. There’s the grab bag of dramatic lines and dramatic poses that come off only as goofy and cheesy (it wouldn’t be so hilarious if they weren’t so darned earnest) and any cool cred that Rygar himself may have accumulated is tossed into the drink when he talks, in his grandiloquent and lead-tongue voice, about his lack of memories from childhood. (You really didn’t think you’d be able to avoid the amnesia angle, did you?) Why he lost his memory isn’t even bothered with, just that he did, and the queasy drama of hearth that arises out of it is definitely something the game could’ve done without.

I imagine it must’ve been difficult to flesh out a personality for a character that has been dormant for a good 10 years, but it’s that very stoical impassivity that we could use today. It’s unfortunate Tecmo had to succumb to fashion. But the story does present an interesting interregnum and case study between games back then and games being released now: things were actually pretty good when the place was populated with mutes and mimes, but nowadays, people can’t be bothered to shut their yap. Do the job now, find a psychiatrist later.

Rygar hasn’t exactly been the most engaging or well-respected series, but newcomers and veterans alike will find it impossible to argue that the newest one isn’t the best yet. Though I find the arcade version to be generic and bland and the NES version to be a charmless mess, fans find plenty that guys and webs backs to the two main originals (including the big stone switches and a pastoral shot of a setting orange sun), but with the gameplay expanded tenfold in every which way.

The Diskarmor returns as weapon of choice, but has the new twist of being able to attach to enemies, whereupon Rygar can then spin them around and toss them into more enemies or into the highly friable environment. The others Diskarmors are equally useful (one sweeps the enemies while another is designed for very close combat) but nothing tops the first one in terms in ingenuity. Rygar can take a more conventional route and pull off a multitude of fancy combos that do look pretty damn cool or he can cast quick summons for an extra wallop.

I have to apologize if this doesn’t get your interest sparked (in the other previews I read, it didn’t too much for me either), but it’s only because describing the game looks rather indistinct on paper. But in execution, it is just plain FUN. Let me italicize the word: fun. Let me bold the word: fun. Let me underline the word: fun. Throughout the duration of the game, the possibility that messing around with the Diskarmor was beginning to wan and wheeze on me never remotely occurred and it remains just as immensely enjoyable at the start of the game as it does at the end.

Though the fundamentals of the game are tamped down pat, Tecmo had to go and let the game falter in key areas that could’ve been so easily rectified it’s saddening and frustrating. For one, there is simply not enough enemy variation; there are only about four types you encounter before they’re recycled with different colors. This wouldn’t have been so egregious had it not been for the fact that, besides the Cyclopes, they’re all very easy to kill. Also, the combo system is rather weak since there’s no reward for performing combos and I find it hard to believe that Tecmo couldn’t be bothered or lacked the hindsight to add enemies that dropped better items or unlocked new modes for high combos (new modes are normally unlocked by finding items or completing the game) or any salutary compensation for your moiling.

Using the new standard set by Devil May Cry (and I’m sure people will find many similarities between this and DMC), the camera cannot be tampered with and uses the same control scheme (when you go to a new area where the camera is in a completely different location, the analog stick won’t reorient itself until you let go). While this is what ultimately drove me away from Devil May Cry, Rygar does it with much more aplomb since the cameras are more reasonably placed - since the game takes place in vast open spaces, or at least places with high ceilings, and not confined to a cramped hallway or tiny rooms. The camera views are also placed for maximum eye candy efficiency and, as the result, the game is a dreamy sight to behold. Producing some of the most appealing and attractive locations ever seen in a game, the palaces, the hillsides, the palisades, the sunken ruins, and floating cities are done with such vertiginous beauty that it evokes the itching desire for exploration and the mesmerizing search for wonders in our own world. Stunning, in every sense of the word.

The heavily touted soundtrack, scored by the Moscow International Symphony Orchestra, is good but not exactly moving, stirring, nor catchy. But at least a sound test, an increasingly scarce sighting in this age of separate soundtrack albums, has been courteously added.

With just a little bit more thought put into the process, Tecmo could’ve hit the ground running with Rygar. But now it’s “just” an insanely fun game with a great gameplay angle and a Marcovaldo-esque sense for all that’s beautiful, instead of the revolutionary game Tecmo should have been gunning for. Aw, you could’ve been the best, kid.

· · · Sqoon